s of the Grand Monarch: by the sunshine of whose
countenance, or the clouds which pass across it, every French man lives
or dies.'

Another political reason which prompted my father so strongly to
guard against the least evil accident in my mother's lying-in in the
country,--was, That any such instance would infallibly throw a balance
of power, too great already, into the weaker vessels of the gentry, in
his own, or higher stations;--which, with the many other usurped rights
which that part of the constitution was hourly establishing,--would, in
the end, prove fatal to the monarchical system of domestick government
established in the first creation of things by God.

In this point he was entirely of Sir Robert Filmer's opinion, That the
plans and institutions of the greatest monarchies in the eastern parts
of the world, were, originally, all stolen from that admirable pattern
and prototype of this houshold and paternal power;--which, for a
century, he said, and more, had gradually been degenerating away into
a mix'd government;--the form of which, however desirable in great
combinations of the species,--was very troublesome in small ones,--and
seldom produced any thing, that he saw, but sorrow and confusion.

For all these reasons, private and publick, put together,--my father
was for having the man-midwife by all means,--my mother, by no means.
My father begg'd and intreated, she would for once recede from her
prerogative in this matter, and suffer him to choose for her;--my
mother, on the contrary, insisted upon her privilege in this matter,
to choose for herself,--and have no mortal's help but the old
woman's.--What could my father do? He was almost at his wit's
end;--talked it over with her in all moods;--placed his arguments in
all lights;--argued the matter with her like a christian,--like a
heathen,--like a husband,--like a father,--like a patriot,--like a
man:--My mother answered every thing only like a woman; which was a
little hard upon her;--for as she could not assume and fight it out
behind such a variety of characters,--'twas no fair match:--'twas seven
to one.--What could my mother do?--She had the advantage (otherwise
she had been certainly overpowered) of a small reinforcement of chagrin
personal at the bottom, which bore her up, and enabled her to dispute
the affair with my father with so equal an advantage,--that both sides
sung Te Deum. In a word, my mother was to have the old woman,--and the
oper